Saturday, December 27, 2014

Robert Bausch is a winner of the Dos Passos Prize for literature, and he has published a collection of short stories and nine novels.His third novel, Almighty Me was eventually adapted into the film Bruce Almighty. His fourth novel A Hole in the Earth was a New York Times Notable Book. Bloomsbury has recently published number nine, Far as the Eye Can See, a novel of finding humanity in the post-bellum big west.Download here.

Judy Schachner is the writer illustrator of picture books like Yo, Vikings! and the tremendously successful Skippyjon Jones series, and we'll be talking about the new one centered on winter fun,Snow What.Download here.

James Ellroy is perhaps America's greatest historical crime novelist and one of its most polarizing. Best known for his L.A. Quartet of novels, which included The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential, as well as the Underworld USA Trilogy, as well as the autobiographies My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse. 2014 finds him launching his second LA Quartet, which is a prequel series, pulling characters from his previous books, and seeing how they had navigated World War II. The first book is Perfidia, and it begins in southern California on December 6, 1941.Download here.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Alexis Coe is a former research curator for the New York Public Library and has had her writing published in publications such as The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Modern Farmer. Zest Books has published her debutAlice + Freda Forever, which is a true crime story of same sex romance which ended in murder in the 1890s in the American South.Download here.

Emily St. John Mandel has published four novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet, her newest one, Station Eleven, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award for fiction. It's the story of apocalypses, personal and global, and people who knew a famous actor before and after a superflu decimates humanity.Download here.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Brock Clarke has published two collections of short stories and four novels including the provocatively titled An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. His newest one, The Happiest People in the World, is the story of real and would-be assassins, editorial cartoonists, witness protection, and faculty-versus-student sporting events.Download here.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Reed Farrel Coleman. Reed is best known for his Moe Prager private detective series which concluded earlier this year with the ninth book in the series,The Hollow Girl.Reed is well-respected having won Macavity, Anthony and three Shamus Awards. The Robert B. Parker estate recently asked him to pick up the Jesse Stone series, and today we'll talk about his first entry into it, Blind Spot, and it's published by Putnam.Download here.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Stephen Schottenfeld is a professor of English at the University of Rochester, and his short fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly, New England Review, and Best American Short Stories. Bloomsbury has recently published his debut novel, Bluff City Pawn, the story of Huddie, a pawnshop owner in Memphis who is struggling with bad business and his two brothers.Download here.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Barbara Shoup is the executive director of the Indiana Writers Center. She's published two books on writing as well as eight novels for young and old adults alike. Her newest novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac,is the first book of the new imprint, Lacewing Books, which is dedicated to bringing literary fiction to the young adult audience. It's the story of two young men recently graduated from high school who travel to meet their literary hero, and one of them learns more about himself the further he gets from home.Download here.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Stephen Usery welcomes Angela Pneuman back to the program to talk about her debut novel, Lay it on My Heart. 13 year-old Charmaine Peake is starting junior high when her father returns home from the Middle East. Their home of East Winder, Kentucky has never agreed on if he is the prophet he has claimed to be, and his grip on sanity has slipped considerably since visiting the Holy Land. Charmaine's mother struggles with keeping the family afloat as Charmaine endures puberty while her world is turning upside down.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Linda Lloyd talks to Ann B. Ross about the first spin-off novel from her Miss Julia series, Etta Mae's Worst Bad-Luck Day. Get a different, but equally hilarious view of Abbottsville, NC as Etta Mae Wiggins tries to move from the trailer park to a mansion by marrying the elderly Howard Connor, and his adult children are not happy about the potential nuptials.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

C.J. Box is and Edgar-winning novelist best known for his Joe Pickett series, which started in 2001 with Open Season, and the fourteenth one, Stone Cold, was published earlier this year. He's also started a series of stand alone novels, in which a different character carries over to the next book. We'll be talking about his first collection of short stories,Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Picket Country, and it's available from Putnam.Download here.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Earl Swift is a veteran journalist and author of non-fiction books. His latest book Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream, had its genesis as a feature piece he wrote in 2004 about the many owners of a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon. The outlaw motorhead in question is one Tommy Armey, whose tumultuous upbringing contributed to his being the meanest brawler in the Virginia Beach metro area, as well as an entrepreneur whose regard for legal restrictions was minimal at best.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Best-selling author Terry McMillan to talk about her most-recent novel, Who Asked You?, which is now available in paperback. Told with a wide range of first-person narrators, it is at its essence the story of a woman nearing retirement in Southern California who takes on the responsibility of raising her two grandsons, but her children's, sisters' and her neighbors' lives also complicate matters as much as they give her support.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Courtney Miller Santo recently returned to the Book Talk studio to talk about her second novel, Three Story House. Three cousins in their late 20s convene in Memphis to rehabilitate an old house as well as their own lives.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Smith Henderson has won a 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award for fiction and a Pushcart Prize. Ecco/Harper
Collins recently published his debut novel, Fourth of July Creek, the story of a Montana social worker who faces a crumbling personal life while he's trying to help the young son of a religious survivalist living in the hills above his small town.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Lisa Howorth is co-owner of Square Books in Oxford, MS, which was named
Bookstore of the Year by Publisher's Weekly in 2013. However, in this interview, we'll be
talking about her debut novel Flying Shoes, which is available from
Bloomsbury. It's the story of Mary Bird Thornton, who in the winter of 1996 learns of new information about the murder of her step-brother some 30 years prior, all while having a really bad week. It's a raucous, affirming novel which proves that life goes on, even if we are haunted by loss.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Lisa Turner's first novel A Little Death in Dixie featured police
detective Billy
Able searching for a missing socialite. Her new novel, The Gone Dead Train, has detective Able back on the track looking for the person
responsible for the suspicious deaths of two musicians.

Karen White is the author of the successful Tradd Street series
set in Charleston, South Carolina as well stand alone novels like The Beach Trees and After the Rain. In this episode, we'll be talking about her
newest book, A Long Time Gone, which follows several generations of women in the Mississippi Delta who run away from home and how they find their ways back.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Peter Heller's written several books of
non-fiction in addition
to many years of fine writing for magazines. When last on the program,
we spoke about his debut novel, The Dog Stars, and in this episode, we'll talk
about his new one, The Painter, about an artist with a violent temper
who has to deal with the life or death consequences
of his actions.

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